The Iron Lady, the new movie about Margaret Thatcher, did not live up to its potential. Perhaps if they had focused on what it was like for her to be both a mother and a woman in power they might have made a more interesting movie.

What does it mean to be ‘natural’ or ‘wild’? Are these qualities, on an archetypal level, associated with women? Can we recognise the archetypes of wild women, incarnating freedom and desire, or earth mothers, here to nurture, who are ultimately very powerful, yet possibly not very bright?

Persons with disturbed characters don’t act the way most of us do largely because they don’t think the way we do. Some will even advance points of view which they don’t really believe but which they want you to believe that they believe — all with a view to manipulating you or managing your impression of them.

Sometimes I am struck in my work as a therapist by how many strong, talented, intelligent, creative, loving women have a tendency to live as if their lives didn’t matter.

Now what would you think if someone said “it’s not that I’m anti-racist or anything, but I don’t believe in discriminating against people because of their race”?

The issue of self-harm is gaining a higher profile, in the UK at least, but it still remains to some extent a hidden and misunderstood problem, as evidenced by the stereotype of a teenage girl cutting her arms in a dark bedroom.

Sometimes tragedies, losses, or terminal illnesses really galvanise us into action, make our priorities crystal clear, and give us a strength we did not know we had…